Pak­istan and Malaysia to en­hance bi­lat­eral trade

Malaysian High Com­mis­sioner Dr. Has­rul Sani Mu­jtabar has said that Malaysia and Pak­istan are po­ten­tial mar­kets and there is a lot of scope to en­hance two-way trade. He was talk­ing to the LCCI Se­nior Vice Pres­i­dent Al­mas Hy­der and Vice Pres­i­dent Nasir Saeed here at the La­hore Cham­ber of Com­merce & In­dus­try. For­mer LCCI of­fice-bear­ers and Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee Mem­bers were also present on the oc­ca­sion.

The High Com­mis­sioner urged Pak­istani busi­ness­men to be more ag­gres­sive in terms of busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties in Malaysia to com­pete with other com­pet­i­tive mar­kets in this era of glob­al­iza­tion. He ad­vised the Pak­istani busi­ness com­mu­nity to ac­tively par­tic­i­pate in in­ter­na­tional con­ven­tions sched­uled to be held in Malaysia in forth­com­ing months. "Pak­istan is a very po­ten­tial mar­ket," the High Com­mis­sioner said, adding that do­ing busi­ness in coun­try like Pak­istan is al­ways very prof­itable.

The LCCI Se­nior Vice Pres­i­dent Al­mas Hy­der said that Pak­istan and Malaysia are mem­bers of OIC and the Com­mon­wealth. Both coun­tries have been main­tain­ing ex­cel­lent diplo­matic re­la­tions with each other since 1957. He said that Malaysia has at­tained re­mark­able growth in al­most all fields of life and has be­come a role model for many Is­lamic coun­tries to fol­low. Al­mas Hy­der said that Malaysia has set a unique bench­mark by way of suc­cess­fully launch­ing its own model of ' mod­ern­iza­tion with in­di­g­e­niza­tion. He said that tech­no­log­i­cal base of Malaysia is strong which was re­sulted due to en­hanc­ing the qual­ity of tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tional education.

"We must avail the op­por­tu­ni­ties of knowl­edge shar­ing and stream­lin­ing our education sys­tem with the help of Malaysian ex­perts", the LCCI Se­nior Vice Pres­i­dent added. He said that Malaysia and Pak­istan signed a Free Trade Agree­ment in Jan­uary 2008 but it has yet to prove use­ful to both of us. We al­ready have the plat­form which must be uti­lized for a win-win sit­u­a­tion.

Talk­ing about de­clin­ing trade trend be­tween two coun­tries, Al­mas Hy­der say that we need to take im­me­di­ate steps to re­gain that level of bi­lat­eral which went as high as dol­lar 2.97 bil­lion in 2011. In 2014, the level of bi­lat­eral trade fur­ther dipped to dol­lar 1.51 bil­lion from dol­lar 2.12 bil­lion in 2013. The bal­ance of trade has been in favour of Malaysia and over the last five years this gap is con­stantly clos­ing.

He said that main rea­son of this fall was dras­tic de­crease in im­port of palm oil from Malaysia which used to be around dol­lar 2.12 bil­lion in 2011 and by 2014 it con­tracted to dol­lar half a bil­lion.

He said that Pak­istan's ex­ports to Malaysia have been rang­ing in be­tween dol­lar 200-240 mil­lion dur­ing 2011 to 2014. There must be some ad­van­tage given to Pak­istan of the said FTA. He said that Pak­istan pro­duces good qual­ity and af­ford­able agri­cul­tural prod­ucts. For ex­am­ple Pak­istani rice, or­anges and man­goes are in great de­mand in Malaysian mar­kets.

He urged the Malaysian High Com­mis­sion to play ac­tive role in or­der to en­cour­age Malaysian in­vestors to con­sider Pak­istan as a safe desti­na­tion for in­vest­ment. He said that Joint ven­tures in the fields of live­stock & dairy, food pro­cess­ing, en­ergy, chem­i­cals, Halal prod­ucts and es­pe­cially in so­lar pan­els can fur­ther strengthen the trade ties be­tween two coun­tries.

The LCCI Vice Pres­i­dent Nasir Saeed said that in past, it was a great fa­cil­ity to fre­quent trav­el­ers from Pak­istan to get Malaysian visa on ar­rival. We will ap­pre­ci­ate if Pak­istani busi­ness­men with rec­om­menda­tory let­ter from lead­ing cham­bers of com­merce could be fa­cil­i­tated by Malaysian au­thor­i­ties. Sim­i­larly, stu­dents ex­change pro­grams can also open up new av­enues of co­op­er­a­tion be­tween two coun­tries. I hope that Malaysian High Com­mis­sion will ex­tend as­sis­tance in this re­gard.

Nasir Saeed urged the Malaysian firms to par­tic­i­pate in 3rd Expo La­hore which is go­ing to be held from 8 to 10April 2016 in Expo Cen­ter La­hore. He said that there are few In­done­sian com­pa­nies which have al­ready booked their stalls in this expo.